


walking barefoot down streets of gold

by eichart



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Grief, Mourning, don't read if you don't want to cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eichart/pseuds/eichart
Summary: Even apart Willy has always been there for him; a text, a phone call, a car, a bus, or plane ride away. Even with an ocean between them, Alex had missed until his chest ached but never once felt alone. He’s never been alone his entire life, and he’s just realizing that now.





	walking barefoot down streets of gold

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't quite a sequel to it, but for maximum angsty feels, I recommend you read my other fic [let me be your shelter (never leave you all alone)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11573814) first!
> 
> Also, another warning that this is quite sad and you are probably bound to cry.

_they say heaven’s nice, i make plans to go_ _  
_ _walking barefoot down streets of gold_

* * *

[SMS to Brosky: 21:59]  
_where are you?? im bored hurry up_

[SMS to Brosky: 23:01]  
_you’ve been doing stuff for like 2 hrs now where the fuck r u_

[SMS to Brosky: 23:01]  
_you promised me ice cream remember_

[SMS to Brosky: 23:06]  
_seriously where r u_

[SMS to Brosky: 23:32]  
_willy?_

…

 _Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message_.

Willy, where are you? You haven’t answered any of my texts. Seriously dude, this isn’t funny. Call me back.

Please.

…

 _Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message_.

Dad’s getting worried. And you’re scaring me. Call me.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave—_

Hello? This is the Stockholm police department. We’re sorry to inform you that there’s been an accident and we need you to come down.

…

It goes like this: Alex’s blood running so, so cold as the words wash over him. They’re sounds, but nothing more than that, no meaning extracted from them as he stares blankly at the place in the wall where once he’d put a hole with his stick. Reality doesn’t hit until much later.

It goes like this: pale skin turning paler, cracks spider-webbing across the screen of his phone as it hits the tile at his feet. (Cracks fracturing across his heart).

It goes like this: Alex is far too comfy on the couch to be bothered to move and he wins the rock paper scissors round that sends Willy to the store for ice cream.

It goes like this: Willy is gone for two hours before Alex starts worrying and floods his phone with text messages and voicemails. Willy never responds to any of them.

It goes like this: Willy leaves and never comes back.

Alex doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so, _so_ alone.

…

The morgue is cold like an ice rink. But this cold smells nothing like the place Alex feels so comfortable on –it’s metallic and sterile, and quiet in all the wrong ways. It is not _quiet_ in the way ice rinks are after hours. The air here is not the still kind that only _is_ as a promise to all the life ahead –this air that forces its way into his lungs and suffocates him is air long gone dead, heavy, full of no promises but that of endings. _This_ is not home; _this_ is not the kind of place where Willy would jump on his back and knock them both to the ground, laughter echoing off Plexiglas.

Metal wheels scrape against their tracks like skate blades against ice revealing the body inch by inch. Alex stands and stares –struck only with the thought that this lifeless thing laid out before him is not Willy.

The Willy he knows –his big brother Willy— is going to come home in a few minutes and stick a frozen carton of chocolate ice cream against Alex’s neck to make him shriek. Willy had always been so full of laughter, easy smiles, pranks, and shitty jokes that weren’t funny but ones Alex laughed at anyway.

This _thing…_

Willy would never be so empty –even in death.

…

Alex has never been alone his entire life and he’s just realizing that now. Even apart Willy has – _had—_ always been there for him; a text, a phone call, a car, a bus, or plane ride away. Even with an ocean between them, Alex had missed Willy until his chest ached but never once felt alone –not with the press of his necklace against his skin, weighted with the promise they made when they bought them: that they’d always find their way back home, together.

Willy had to live two years without Alex, but Alex – _Alex_ has never had to live a single day in his life without Willy in it.

...

He wakes up and it hurts.

He never thought it would hurt to breathe in a world without Willy in it. Alex had never even thought to consider a world without Willy in it. Why would he? That’s the stuff of nightmares, and in their golden lives nightmares never come true.

But how things change.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

Willy? It’s Alex. But you probably knew that already. Or maybe you didn’t. Or you won’t. What am I doing? What am I _doing?_ I know you’re not going to answer. You’re never going to answer, but –but I _need_ you to come back because I can’t do this without you. It –it hurts and I don’t know how to do this without you. Please, you need to come back.

It hurts so fucking much. Make it stop.

Willy…

Come back, please.

…

Alex comes home to a cold, solemn house. The moment he steps over the threshold he feels how deeply this loss has permeated everything. Gone is the cheerful warmth that suffused these halls from his nineteenth birthday only weeks prior. In its place there’s this melancholy underlying every conversation and every shifted movement. It coats everything like a frigid layer of frost and he hates it. Stockholm has always been a source of warmth: summer sunshine and bright laughter even in the cold depths of winter. It was something he wrapped himself in no matter the distance, the severity, the need. Now the house is not so much a home as it is a building with its heart ripped out.

He never realized how much of his world was fed on Willy’s smile, how much of its color bled from Willy’s laugh.

Willy’s bedroom in the Stockholm house looks untouched with Alex enters. The sheets on the bed are still a little rumpled from the last time Willy had haphazardly attempted to straighten them before he returned to Toronto. It looks like he’s going to come home soon; that maybe in a few hours Alex’s phone is going to buzz with the text that Willy needs picking up from the airport ASAP. But it isn’t, because Willy’s never coming home like that. Not ever. And maybe that’s what hurts the most: this greyed out world that could almost be a nightmare that will shatter once he wakes.

Alex stares at the empty, empty bed with its rumpled sheets and wonders how something can be so painfully burrowed in his chest and yet so simultaneously unreal. He hasn’t slept in bed with Willy since he was six and still afraid of thunderstorms. He hasn’t slept alone in Willy’s bed since he was twelve and Willy had gone to start chasing the NHL dream a thousand miles away.

When Alex crawls into Willy’s bed the sheets are cold the same way the morgue was. He hugs close the soft fabric of a well-worn hoodie with faded writing proclaiming the same Swedish team Willy left to play for when Alex was twelve. Something unclenches behind his eyes, prickling and flooding. Something grips even tighter in his chest. He chokes on a sob and hates the way it scratches at his throat and makes this feel so utterly real.

He curls up in the middle, hood pulled up over his head and knees drawn tight into his chest. Outside, there’s a distant flash of lightning and a _pinck_ of rain against the windows as a north wind blows in a thunderstorm. Alex trembles.

The corners of his rectangular pendant dig into his palm, metal frigid and tangible –more tangible than anything that’s happened the last few days. It is this that breaks that last of his resolve. He closes his hand tighter around his necklace and cries for the first time since this began.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

I—I’d do anything to get you back. Anything. B—because I can’t do this without you. I’ve never been able to do anything without you. I always hated that, you know? The fact that it seemed like sometimes I always needed you. I’m sorry. I’m so s—

I wish I didn’t need you. But—I do.

I need you, Willy.

Why aren’t you here?

…

The dark circles under his eyes become increasingly more prominent. Alex can tell from the worried glances shot his way more than from his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

It’s not his fault he barely sleeps anymore, because he doesn’t know what will come the minute he slips off into oblivion. Nightmares of blood and car brakes screeching, Willy’s life slipping through his hands; dreams, _memories_ , where Willy smiles sweetly at him and chirps him to no end about his attire, his shot, his stupid little habits.

Alex doesn’t know which one is worse. He finds his cheeks streaked with tears when he wakes from both.

The grief counselor tries his best to be sympathetic, and Alex just stares blankly back –expensive sessions turned into paying for silence. It doesn’t help that the only person who could help him is the person who isn’t here.

…

Auston Matthews was Willy’s linemate on the ice, friend off the ice, and something more –unspoken but poignant.

Alex has always thought that Auston was a bit too laid back, but Auston hugs him close now, hard enough to bruise ribs not that Alex minds. Every hurt now is better than this untouchable pain that lives next to a shattered heart.

Auston did not live his whole life with Willy, but Alex can see how deep this has cut into him too. Auston has always had a sort of dead gaze, but Alex looks into it now and sees that it’s anything but. It’s like seeing his reflection, all the agony and grief brewing just below the surface.

Willy never did need to know anyone long to make an impression. So maybe Alex clutches to this relic from Willy’s life just as tightly as Auston clings to him.

“I’m sorry,” says Auston, quiet, rough in the way voices are after tears. Sincere –the most sincere Alex has heard. And he looks, Auston Matthews, generational talent; Auston Matthews, number one in his draft class seven spots before Alex; Auston Matthews, who still has his hands on Alex’s wrist and shoulder, a sheen of unshed tears in his eyes, and a tightness in his voice.

“Me too,” whispers Alex, and he means it.

Because this here in front of him, looking into Auston’s eyes, he sees all the things cut short in Willy’s life. All the things that might have been but weren’t.

Auston nods once, doesn’t let go of Alex.

And Alex gets it, but shared blood only goes so far. He’s not Willy.

…

Alex gets that he’s not the only one who’s grieving –there’s a whole community of fans out there with tear stained faces, the whole insular hockey community, the dozens of people Willy called friends, the handful he called brothers, family flesh and blood and golden… There’s millions out there, all bleeding their grief to airwaves and the internet. He _gets_ that he’s not alone in his sorrow, and he tries not to begrudge them theirs because he knows that’s not what Willy would want.

Willy always did love the spotlight.

But there are times when he thinks he’s the only one who feels how deeply this has cut. The only one that sees Willy only to realize it was just a mirage. The only one that gets up at night to find comfort only to remember he’s alone.

The only one who dreams about how this is his fault.

The only one Willy bothers to haunt.

…

The wake ends with a whimper and Alex feels stripped, emotionally raw and sensitive like an unprotected live wire. When he leaves, he finds himself at the rink instead of at home, though home doesn’t really feel like home anymore. Maybe that’s why he’s here: desperately needing their second home to still feel the same. Maybe the rink keeper sees this desperation in his eyes when he shows up, suit rumpled, skates in hand, and eyes bloodshot because she lets him into the darkened rink with little more than a pitying glance.

He laces up his skates in quick familiar motions and steps out on the ice. Alex has never been a fan of suicide skates, but he does them now, pushing from line to line and back again until his lungs burn with the exertion. When he finally stops, his own breath loud in the empty dark rink, he can finally feel his own heartbeat again. He feels…

‘Alive’ is the wrong word to describe it. Numb might be more accurate, like the expanses of white and familiar red and blue lines make this thing bearable. It’s better than the pain.

…

Alex sees him sometimes: disappearing around street corners and in the crowds that pass by the windows. Out of the corner of his eye there’re these blonde flashes between solemn colored attire. There’s this laugh stuck in his ear when everyone has been doing nothing but crying. And he looks and he looks and he wants and needs and chases and—

All he ever comes up with is a fistful of empty air, this pain deep in his chest, and the realization he may never be sane again; he may never feel _whole_ again.

He sees all these faces.

Nicky Backstrom, David Pastrnak, Oliver Kylington, Auston Matthews…

He sees his grief reflected back and back and back at him on faces half-known: hears it in rough voices and condolences that sound emptier and emptier every time they’re repeated. This monotonous line of people is but a photo album of solemn expressions that only serve to remind Alex of how many people his brother left an impression on –how much life Willy had already lived and how much more there was supposed to be stretching in front of him.

He wonders if any of them feel like half their insides have been torn out.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

Why the fuck won’t you leave me alone? I can’t sleep, and you were always the one I turned to for that. But now –when is this going to end? I’m so _fucking_ tired but I’m too scared to close my eyes because I don’t know what I’m going to get but I _know_ it’s going to be painful and I’m so tired of this pain. I want it to stop. Why won’t it stop? I just --I keep seeing you, y’know? And it’s --they’re telling me it’s all fake. It’s all in my head and I know but _god_ . Some part of me just keeps _hoping--_

I’m so tired…

Just…

Come home…

Come back to me…

…

His necklace settles with a cold weight against his chest every morning –fingers no longer fumbling with the clasp after all the morning, all the _years_ he’s done this simple action knowing somewhere Willy was doing the same.

Its twin will soon lie six feet under, never to be warm again.

Alex tries not to think about that –thinks instead about the day they bought them, the sunshine on their cheeks and the childish seriousness on Willy’s face.

The twin rectangular pendant gets tucked under Willy’s shirt before the funeral, and Alex certainly doesn’t remember the way Willy used to poke it back under his collar and grin like it was some great secret between just the two of them.

They had plenty of those too: secrets. Except Alex is the only one left holding them now. The thought nudges at something, and he pushes it away just as he pushes flyaway strands of hair off his face and tries not to think about how Willy always did that too.

He stands in the grass and feels it against his skin and it simultaneously feels just like a piece of printed metal and something invaluably precious at the same time.

The funeral is solemn –Alex can’t help but think how much Willy would have hated it.

…

The sun blazes overhead and Alex is sweating in his suit. He can practically hear Willy’s voice telling him to put sunscreen on his nose before he turns into Rudolph. But that’s not right, because Willy is three meters in front of him in a white casket. Silent.

The sun blazes overhead and Alex thinks about cold lake water rushing over his skin. He thinks about how if this were any other summer they’d be out on the lake right now with Linus and Alexander Younan and Oliver laughing their asses off, pushing each other into chilly waters and smiling too wide when they broke the surface again. Those were the type of days that seemed eternal and ephemeral at the same time.

Too ephemeral, thinks Alex.

But he already feels like he’s drowning, never to break the surface again.

This isn’t any other summer.

…

When the funeral ends, Alex goes back to the rink. Maybe, he thinks, it was a good thing he and Willy were not like the Sedin brothers –were not lifelong linemates.

But that’s not really true, is it? They may not have been inseparable linemates on the ice, but they always were in more than that. At home, in the car, a thousand miles apart; they had somehow always been in tune with each other.

The lights of the rink are on this time, and Alex dumps a bucket of pucks on the ice with a familiar clatter. It’s too easy to get sucked up in the motion of old drills after all the summer hours he and Willy spent on this ice.

_“Keep away time!”_

_Alex barely has time to process the words before Willy’s stolen the puck from him, easy laughter loud in the rink. “You—” Alex gives chase, checking Willy into the boards and stealing the puck back. It goes like that, back and forth until Alex is breathless from exertion and laughter._

_The game eventually fizzles out, the rink quiet again as they sit on the boards next to each other. Alex grabs the water bottle from Willy’s hands and Willy lets him. “You scared?” asks Willy._

_“For what?”_

_“The draft.”_

_Alex shrugs._

_“You don’t have to be –you’re going to go high.”_

_“Higher than you?”_

_“Well—”_

_Alex merely laughs in response and nudges Willy’s shoulder with his own. “Thanks.” He’d needed that reassurance even if he hadn’t realized it himself._

Alex is pulled from the memory when his skate blade catches in a rough patch of ice, twisting his ankle awkwardly. When he gets up again there’s a bitter taste in his mouth and the rink feels colder. Alex puts his head down and focuses on skating instead, pushing around corners until he falls to his knees at center ice.

...

Auston kisses him exactly once –some point in the days that trail the funeral when they’re all still drunk with grief and expensive wine. Alex kisses him back and doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because he’s alone now and never felt so fucking alone and he’s _tired_ of feeling alone and he knows Auston misses too –only in a different way—and maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s Auston or maybe it’s _because_ it’s Auston but—

This isn’t the first time Alex has been a rebound for someone of Willy’s –this is just the first time that it really hasn’t been about forgetting. Though rebound isn’t the right word; he wasn’t even aware that Willy and Auston had been –had gotten to—

“I know you miss him,” Alex says hollowly –quietly, sadly—when Auston pulls back, stiff and eyes closed. “I miss him too,” he continues, and Auston lolls into his shoulder. Alex lets him. “But I’m not him. I never was.”

“I know,” says Auston into Alex’s shoulder. “I know, but I never had the chance to—“

And Alex gets it. Can’t begrudge him for it.

“He loved you too,” he says, and it’s a truth, but from the way Auston stiffens against him, he wonders if that’s the right thing to say at all.

…

Auston calls him three days later. “You’re wrong.”

Alex doesn’t say anything.

“Willy may have –may have love me, the Leafs. Whatever. But you’re the only one that mattered,” says Auston. “He would have done anything for you.”

There’s a lot of things Alex could say to that –because that’s not all true and he didn’t sit through hours of phone calls and hundreds of texts about Auston Matthew’s hockey and hotness and Mitch and Kappy and Toronto just to have them think this. And yet—Alex has known this too: that Willy would reverse the turn of the earth for him.

In the end maybe it doesn’t matter who Willy loved the most –all the matters is the emptiness left in his wake.

When he finally speaks it sounds choked, something like a sob, “Then why isn’t he here?”

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

You’re a fucking idiot. I told you to go after that asshole months ago and did you ever? _NO_. And now I’m stuck with all your lost chances and what ifs knowing there’s not a fucking thing I can do about them.

It feels like it’s coming apart without you.

And I thought it was getting better, but some days I feel like I’m coming apart without you still and I hate it. I hate it, and I hate you.

Why’d you have to leave? Why’d you have to leave _me_?

…

Alex wakes up at noon some week after the funeral to find that Willy’s things from his Toronto apartment have been shipped back home to join the stuff from the emptying bedroom –pieces of Willy’s life neatly packaged away into boxes just as Willy had been in his coffin. Alex steps gingerly around them all and wonders if any parts of Willy are still stuck to the toupe apartment walls he hated so much.

There’s a discard pile already growing in the front hall, and Alex sits in the middle of all the mess to poke through the nearest box. There’s a glint of gold cloth near the bottom, and Alex fishes out a glittering bandanna. He stares almost uncomprehending at the soft strip of fabric, only looking up when he hears footsteps.

“What is this? Why are you getting rid of this – _all_ this?” Alex asks quietly, one hand sweeping over the multitude of boxes, voice deceivingly even.

“Alex,” says his father, sounding tired and unconcerned. “Willy had a lot of stuff. We can’t—”

“Well, you –you can’t get rid of this. You can’t just –get rid of _him._ ”

“You have to—”

“You don’t get it!”

“Alex, we know it’s—”

Alex scrambles to his feet, shoving the gold bandana into his pocket. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. Just –just leave me the fuck alone.”

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

It’s like—It’s like everyone is fucking _forgetting_ . Everyone but me. You weren’t forgettable, you weren’t supposed to be forgettable. I don’t understand how they can do this –how they can… look back and _laugh_ . I don’t—no one gets it. _No one_.

—You would’ve gotten it.

…

The drive between the Stockholm house and the rink is familiar, Alex has certainly driven it more times he can count. He can remember the last time almost as vivid as the sun streaming down to make the road in front of him sparkle.

_Alex is driving because that’s what he does when he finally returns home. Willy’s in the passenger seat rapping along to Kendrick Lamar, grinning wide with a gold bandana tied obnoxiously around his head. “Dreams of me getting’ shaded under—”_

_“You’re ridiculous.”_

_“Oh c’mon, you love—”_

_“I really really do not.” Alex can feel the laugh building in his chest though, ready to escape betray his voiced disapproval._

_“Mhmm.” Willy has his phone out now, no doubt zooming in dramatically on Alex’s face. “Smile, Alex. Show ‘em how happy you are to be back with your best bro.”_

_“—Stop.” Alex is definitely laughing now, one hand leaving the steering wheel to half-heartedly paw at the phone in Willy’s hand to cover the camera._

_“You do not appreciate me enough.”_

_Willy’s comical pout replaces the phone, and Alex rolls his eyes. “I appreciate you plenty, asshole.”_

The sun had been shining blindingly through the windshield then; it shines through the same way now as Alex pulls into the rink parking lot in a silent car.

His mother finds him there hours later, no doubt sent by his father. “You can’t hide here forever, Alex.” Alex takes another heavy slap shot at the net in response. The puck misses the net, ricocheting off the end boards instead. His mother heaves a sigh. “Willy would want—”

That snaps at something inside him. “How do you fucking know what Willy would want?” He turns in her direction, arms swept up and back down again, his hockey stick hitting the ice with sharp _clack._ “He’s not fucking here, now is he?”

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

How could you do this? How could you be so fucking stupid and reckless? Did you even think? Before you, you got into that car feeling all fucking buzzed and shit? Because this isn’t fucking fair –not to me, not to anyone.

How could you leave us so easily?

…

When Alex finally comes home again, muscles sore and burning and vocal cords raw and stripped, there are three large boxes in his room labeled ‘ _W. Nylander._ ’ He stares for a moment –doesn’t open them.

…

_“I guess this is where I go this way and you go that way.” Him and Willy are in the airport, Willy bound for Toronto, Alex leaving for his new team for the first time._

_“Yeah—“ says Alex. This isn’t the first time they’ve parted ways, but it feels different this time. “–call me when you land?”_

_“Always.” Willy steps forward to wrap him in a hug. “I told you you would make it to the Show,” He whispers in his ear._

_“Yeah,” Alex smiles into the shoulder of Willy’s suit, “you always did.”_

_“You can do anything, Alex. Remember that.”_

Alex folds a gold bandanna and leaves it on his dresser. Downstairs, he can hear laughter in the kitchen.

I can do anything, he thinks. I can be strong enough for this.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

I’m sorry about the last message, Willy. But you know that don’t you? Never had a fight so bad that we wouldn’t be best friends after, did we?

I love that… Loved…

We called every day. You know that, right? I scroll through days and weeks and months and years of call logs and it’s you. They’re all filled with you. You were the first one I always wanted to call. You –you still are.

…

Seasons change. Alex picks up his skates and throws himself to the rink. To the burn in his muscles and rasp of his breath after suicides and endless laps around the rink.

There are some days that skating, _hockey_ is the only thing that keep him sane –it helps a little to have his world narrowed to the end of his stick and a puck. Skate and shoot. It’s simple, clinical like the scrap of his skates against ice. Like the stitches that bound Willy’s chest back together.

Alex faces the roar of the crowd and skates and dangles in a pale shadow of his brother. There are times, when he feels light again, in the wake of a good goal swept up in the arms of teammates and music and the show. Willy’s not in the bleachers watching, but Alex likes to think he is. Somehow.

When Alex plays, it’s with the memory of laughter and pipedreams voiced in a Calgary basement all those years ago. He faces the roar of the crowd wearing a grimace some days and a smile on others. He wears 29 across his back, always.

Some days he skates to forget.

Some days he skates to remember.

…

Alex gets a call for Worlds.

Willy doesn’t.

When he gets his jersey, blue and yellow, he makes sure it says ‘A. Nylander.’

When he plays, he’s not alone.

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

I can’t call you anymore –well, can’t call and hear you talk back to me. That was always the most comforting part: hearing your voice no matter what you said. Talking to you… it was like breathing, but easier. Guess this is the closest I’m ever going to get… Not very close at all, is it? I miss you Willy. I miss your voice and your stupid jokes and your stupid advice I’d never take.

God, I miss you so much.

...

It’s May and the last traces of winter have been washed away by a promising sun. The dirt around Willy’s tombstone is still soft, golden flowers beginning to bloom against the gray speckled granite.

Alex sits. The grass is soft here, the kind good for picnics and parks and wrestling until they’re breathless, though Alex usually comes alone. Sometimes Auston comes too, but when he does they do not wrestle and laugh –mostly sit in a reserved sort of silence Willy would have hated but they both somehow appreciates. Sometimes Auston cries too, Alex pretends not to notice.

“It’s almost been a year, you know,” he says. And now, in the soft light of a promising summer, Alex remembers and it doesn’t hurt as much. It doesn’t hurt so much to talk to someone who isn’t here anymore, who isn’t ever going to respond. “A year, and it’s not perfect –I don’t think it’s ever going to be perfect. Because you were – _we_ were, and you’re gone. But it’s easier. And I miss you and I’m never not going to miss you, Willy.”

He runs a finger along the edge of his necklace, blue eyes glistening. A new habit now, a reminder of how things used to be. “I still wear it you know. Because you’ll be wearing yours forever too. It makes you feel closer –it always did when you were far away, and you’re the farthest you’ll ever be from me now.”

“You were always gold, you know? From your fucking personality to your stupid medals. Never failed to chirp me for not living up to that. Well –guess I’m gold now too, finally.” Alex draws a medal from his pocket, rueful smile quirking lips. Five ounces of gold feels heavy in his hands, and Alex buries the medal beneath a bundle of sunflowers –golden like Willy’s hair, bright like his smile. “I still wish we could have won together, but it was for you. All of it was for you.

“Happy Birthday,” Alex says, fingers pressing into the grass that’s been watered with too many of his tears, seen too many things and watched him grow where Willy should have. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

…

_Sup it’s Willy. I’m doing stuff but feel free to leave a message._

I love you, Willy. I always will.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you're alright and I extend my deepest apologies. My inspo (if you didn't guess) was Charlie Puth's original version of "See You Again." The title is actually from "Shining Like America" by Marc Scibilia which, while a very good song, is actually pretty irrelevant to the fic besides those two lines I really liked.
> 
> I would love if you dropped a comment!! I don't write Grief and Mourning very often and would appreciate any feedback you would like to give.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and as always, you can find me [here](http://thenylanderbros.tumblr.com)!.


End file.
